The present invention generally relates to the field of smart grids, smart meters, industrial control, advanced metering infrastructure networks, communications networks, mesh networks, access networks, and machine to machine (M2M) communications.
A smart grid network is often based on multiple instances of multi-hop mesh short range local area networks (LAN), such as the IEEE 802.11s mesh extension to the IEEE 802.11 standard or proprietary protocols, that collect data from a number of smart meters and forward the data towards a “collector”. The collector is typically an offload point or portal that provides connectivity to forward the data from the smart meters in the LAN to the utility operator through a longer range wide area network (WAN), such as a proprietary WAN or a wireless network operated by, for instance, a mobile network operator (MNO). The collector may also receive control and data from the utility operator via the WAN and forward the control and data to the recipient meter or meters through the LAN. This architecture of a WAN providing connectivity to one or more mesh LANs comprised of one or more meters enables smart grid connectivity even though the meters may be disadvantageously located with respect to WAN connectivity.
A collector is typically specifically designed and provisioned for acting as a portal between the LAN and the WAN. A collector could be, for instance, an IEEE 802.11s mesh portal or a portal of a proprietary mesh technology. Although the Zigbee communication protocol is typically used for indoor mesh, for instance using the Home plug Smart Energy Profile, both Zigbee and Bluetooth could alternatively be used to provide the mesh LAN. Relays may be used to reach the collector.
While the meters may use mesh to self-organize and heal the mesh LAN, repeaters and collectors are strategically placed in planned locations advantageous to WAN connectivity with an expectation of acting as a portal for certain sets of meters in a geographic area. While some smart grid systems use mesh techniques to provide connectivity between repeaters and collectors, thereby increasing the ability of the smart grid network to self-heal upon the outage on a repeater or collector, this method of achieving self-healing capability either requires a further capital expenditure for special purpose repeater and collector equipment and sites or is not robust due to a sparse deployment of repeaters and collectors, which can be a single point of failure, relative to meters. Additionally, adding more collectors may cause more load or overhead on the WAN which can be undesirable.
There is a deficiency in the self-healing characteristics, self-organizing characteristics, and robustness of typical smart grid LAN connectivity to the WAN that results in additional load and overhead on the WAN. Similar deficiencies exist in body access networks, sensor networks, industrial control systems, and related machine to machine applications as for the aforementioned smart grid systems.